Comments on: Applied Critique: Existence, Pseudo-Existence and OOO

By: Speculative Ontology/Transcendental Dynamism: a note « Naught Thought

Speculative Ontology/Transcendental Dynamism: a note « Naught Thought — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 18:46:35 +0000

[...] is interesting (and what Peter spoke about here in very different terms) is the status of the pre-ontological or of taking Plato’s beard as [...]

By: Stranger than Fiction « Deontologistics

Stranger than Fiction « Deontologistics — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 02:32:59 +0000

[...] Well, it looks like I’m going to have to break my moratorium on posting about OOO again, given that Levi has just thrown down the gauntlet on his blog (here), specifically challenging us Sellarsians/Brandomians to account for the paradoxes of material implication. Moreover, he’s done it in the context of resurrecting the first debate between himself and I, concerning the reality of fictional objects (all of the appropriate references to which should be trackable from here). [...]

By: Naturalism and Normativity «

Naturalism and Normativity « — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 12:09:25 +0000

[...] The reason I have been claiming that norms do not really exist, or that they are pseudo-beings (here), is precisely because the truth of interpretations of them cannot be assessed in objective terms. [...]

By: The Harman Debate « Deontologistics

The Harman Debate « Deontologistics — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 08:43:07 +0000

[...] Applied Critique: Existence, Pseudo-Existence and OOO Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)On Throwing Stones [...]

By: The Perils of Representation « Deontologistics

The Perils of Representation « Deontologistics — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 16:07:32 +0000

[...] At this point, it is likely that many will want to accuse me of grounding my own interpretation of these epistemological issues on ontological assumptions about differences in types of entities, making me no better than the hypothetical Meinongian I discussed above (hypothetical Meinongians are the best kind!). It will also strike anyone who knows how passionate I am about the Deleuzian commitment to the univocity of Being (see here) as completely incongruous that I am appealing to such differences in type at all. Don’t worry, I’m still all for univocity, and I’m not making elicit ontological distinctions. Rather, this variety of types of object is generated by the pragmatics underlying the structure of quantification and existential commitment. I’m not going to go into this in too much detail, but I’m getting most of it straight out of Brandom’s account of existence (and types of existence) in Chapter 7 of Making It Explicit. All of this relates to the comments I’ve made before about the distinction between generic existence and real existence (here). [...]

By: On Throwing Stones « Deontologistics

On Throwing Stones « Deontologistics — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 22:52:04 +0000

[...] the argument is sorely incomplete (I had a go at reconstructing the motivations for this position a while back, although I’d withdraw the claims made about Harman, as his position is more [...]

By: Dissecting Norms « Deontologistics

Dissecting Norms « Deontologistics — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 22:28:51 +0000

[...] are pseudo-beings), and although I’ve cleared up to some extent what I mean by this (e.g., here), I’ve also said that they are nonetheless manifest in the natural realm (which for me is the [...]

By: Normativity, Causation and Explanation Revisited « Deontologistics

Normativity, Causation and Explanation Revisited « Deontologistics — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:29:09 +0000

[...] insofar as I claim that norms as we ordinarily talk about them don’t exist (they are pseudo-beings) but insofar as they are deployed as practical reasons within such talk they can nonetheless have [...]

By: The Question of Being « Deontologistics

The Question of Being « Deontologistics — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 19:39:00 +0000

[...] Deontologistics Researching the Demands of Thought « Applied Critique: Existence, Pseudo-Existence and OOO [...]

By: deontologistics

deontologistics — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 09:15:05 +0000

I will take it again, thankyou.

Firstly, the symbol ‘Harry Potter’ might be deployed in an informational link between two sign-systems, in the sense that there are _tokenings_ of it. This does not imply that there is therefore some third sign-system called ‘Harry Potter’ that they are interacting with indirectly. There might be (and indeed I think that there is) some additional sign-system that they are indirectly interacting with here, which constrains the way the symbol ‘Harry Potter is deployed. It’s just that this sign-system can’t be Harry Potter, because whatever it is, it isn’t a wizard.

Secondly, the difference between wizards and horses is that if we develop and adequate (or more adequate) understanding of what causes our ideas of horses then we uncover more about those features that we represent (or should represent) horses as having (e.g., certain kinds of internal composition which provide certain capacities). If we do the same with what causes our ideas of wizards, we do not uncover anything about the features and capacities that we represent wizards as having. We might uncover the reasons why we represent them as such, for instance the causal history of the development of the concept of wizards, magic and history of wizard fiction. However, these are two different kinds of understanding.

I still think that a lot of these problems come from a confusion of the Spinozan ‘idea’ and concepts, one being a universal ontological notion and the other being a properly representational notion (which is restricted to certain beings/modes). To put this in Deleuzian terms, the Spinozan idea corresponds to the virtual multiplicity of any give system/being/mode. There is no virtual multiplicity of Harry Potter, because there is no Harry Potter. However, Deleuze also thinks that there are concepts, which are virtual multiplicites, even if not all virtual multiplicities are concepts. They are virtual multiplicities corresponding to systems which consist in and regulate the production of symbol tokenings (what Levi calls ‘replicators’). So, there is a virtual multiplicity or Idea which corresponds to ‘Harry Potter’ insofar as it regulates the production of tokenings of that symbol, but it is not an Idea of Harry Potter, insofar as it does not give us the virtual structure (capacities and tendencies) of a wizard.